Deltron with the 3030 Orchestra

Description

Both timely and avant garde, Deltron 3030 accurately – if surrealistically – captured the spirit of the cusp of the millennium, an era when a technology-driven stock market bubble was on the verge of bursting, when the political world was entering an era of unprecedented partisanship, when global inequality was beginning to skyrocket. Critics dubbed it a masterpiece: ”The most purely enjoyable hip-hop album of 2000,”NME declared. Vice praised Deltron 3030 as “a dope hip-hop concept album…visionary sci-fi rap for comic book heads, cyberpunks and conspiracy theorists that closed the gaps between indie-rap, boom bap and future-music.” ”It’s not only one of the best albums in either of their catalogs, but one of the best to come out of the new underground, period,” said AllMusic.com. Pitchfork called Nakamura the “poet laureate of creepy, oppressive beats,” describing the album as an “exciting” reimagining of “the future from the bottom up” that reveals Del as a “surprisingly acute social critic.”Del The Funky Homosapien, founder of Oakland’s seminal Hieroglyphics crew, launched his career as part of his cousin Ice Cube’s posse, da Lench Mob, and gained recognition as a top-tier hiphop verbalist with his 1991 debut, I Wish My Brother George Was Here, featuring the memorable tracks “Mistadobalina” and “Dr. Bombay.” He would release three more albums -1993′s No Need for Alarm, 1998′s Future Development and 2000′s Both Sides of the Brain - before joining with Nakamura and Koala for Deltron 3030.Dan “The Automator” Nakamura, the architect of the sonic landscape within which Del and Koala work their magic, first captivated the hiphop underground with Dr. Octagonacologyst, his collaboration with Ultramagnetic MC’s Kool Keith. He went on to produce Cornershop’s breakout album, When I Was Born for the 7th Time, and to team up with fellow superproducer Prince Paul under the name Handsome Boy Modeling School, before forming Deltron 3030 with Del and Koala.Kid Koala, a native of Vancouver whose turntablism mixtape Scratchcratchratchatch, recorded on cassette while a university student, brought him to the attention of superstar British DJs Matt Black and Jonathan More, better known as Coldcut; the duo signed him as the first North American artist on their new label Ninja Tune, launched as a haven for the world’s most exceptional DJ and EDM talent. A year into his signing, Koala met Nakamura at the New York show of his first U.S. tour; the two hit it off immediately, and – beginning with Deltron – Koala became one of The Automator’s most frequent collaborators.